Mementoes of Humanity
by rayemars
Summary: Bride of Deimos fic. The devil lingers over those details that one girl collects to remember her fellow human beings.


Disclaimer: Bride Of Deimos belongs to Yuho Ashibe and Etsuko Ikeda.

I only own up to book 4 of this manga so far, so this scene occurs somewhere near the end of that.  
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He has many names: the devil, the god of fear, the corpse hunter, Elf-King, Deimos.  He is occasionally--incorrectly--referred to as Death.  He exists wherever there is pain, wherever there is fear, wherever humans lose control of their emotions and themselves.

However, if you happened to be looking for him, you could start by finding the location of one Minako Ifu.

~~~

He is watching her sleep again.

Minako doesn't know that he is there, doesn't know what a habit Deimos has made of this.  He has spent more nights than he will openly admit, sitting at the foot of her bed and thinking.  Sometimes he waves away a glittering butterfly.

If the neckline and sleeves of her nightgown are suitable, sometimes he studies her scars.

Minako is a blessed girl--even the marks upon her are small and barely visible.  There is the faintest hint of a needle's puncture wound on her right forearm.  It might even be healed completely by now, and he only continues to see it because he knows where it should be.  There is another, slightly more obvious mark upon her throat, a thin ragged line where her skin was torn by a vampire's teeth because she once again didn't listen to him.  He dislikes that mark.

Often he moves to her vanity and riffles through the objects in its drawers.  It is another part of this strange ritual he has come to adopt.

Her room is neat and clean--what one would expect of a girl like her.  The only exception is an empty cage that stands by the window.  Her mother doesn't understand why she refuses to get a new bird, but Minako only shakes her head and smiles, brushing it off with a quick comment.  Deimos has stopped openly killing those close to her, but she is still unwilling to place an innocent creature within his reach.

Sometimes he thinks that he could have left the bird alive.

Minako's room is neat and clean, but her vanity is another matter.  Its drawers are cluttered with objects, many of which would seem strange and useless to a casual observer.  But that is hardly what Deimos is.

Taped to the wall behind the vanity, just beneath the mirror, is a postcard of Edgar Degas' "The Star."  A little while back, he altered the card so that an image of Ryou was standing behind the curtain.  If she has noticed, she has said nothing about it.

In the first drawer, mingled with the cosmetics and beauty aids that she hardly needs, are several eclectic items.  A dried devil lily--though he knows that it is not the one he gave to her.  He supposes she saved it out of the bunch that she threw into the sea.

A pair of heart-shaped pendants, one charred and one still a shining, beautiful gold.  He is not certain why she kept the fake one--she has no need of reminders as to how crafty he can be when it comes to his deals.

A small screw, the motorcycle grease long dried on it.  He had nothing to do with Lily's actions, but he doubts that she believes that.

A newspaper clipping of Jiro Ota's second trial, the one where he was determined innocent of robbery and manslaughter.  She never kept track of him after that, which he supposes to be a good thing--once the story reached the public, Mitsuko's family went through the legal paperwork necessary to disown her as their adopted heir.  But even if Minako had kept track, he's certain that she would find a silver lining in the fact that Jiro and Mitsuko were soon married afterwards.  Her optimism can be frustrating.

There is nothing from the churches she prays in, strangely--but he supposes that she would consider taking something from there to be theft or sacrilege, or a combination of the two.  The letter from the murdered woman used to be in this drawer, but it was taken by the police when the priest turned himself in.

Finding all the mementoes in their proper places, Deimos shuts the first drawer and opens the second.  He is careful to be quiet enough that he will not wake Minako.  Though he enjoys watching her become riled and argue with him, at the moment he only wants peace and quiet.  His current actions are not something he is willing to explain.

This drawer is less cluttered; there is a hairbrush, a lipstick, a clipping of Tatsuhiko's obituary, because she wasn't able--or wasn't willing--to take the bracelet.

A program from her school's production of Romeo and Juliet--dated for the opening night, the only night that the show occurred.  The remainder of the performances were cancelled after Sayaka's disappearance.

Dried-up seeds of a balsam flower.  He is impressed that she managed to collect those, considering how she fainted . . . and why.  He is not certain whether the seeds are meant to be a memory of the dead little girl or of Valsamina.

A photograph of the clock tower.  She borrowed a camera from a friend and waited until the clock struck the hour.  It is a lovely shot of Machiko in the middle of a tango for one.

A dried bouquet of forget-me-nots.

His eyes narrow as he sees those.  He picks up the bouquet and stares at it, listening to the rustle of the fragile petals.

If he closes his hand, they will be crushed.

. . .And Minako will cry.

. . .And he is becoming tired of seeing her cry.  It . . . no longer sits well with him.

He stares at the bouquet for a minute longer, his shoulders tense with frustration.  And then he sets it back in the drawer.  He tells himself, as he has done ever since he began this ritual, that he will get rid of it next time.

An empty perfume bottle.  Deimos's expression is curiously blank as he picks it up.

It would have been unbelievably simple to have taken Minako to Hades with him, if he had just waited another half-hour on that afternoon.  It was the same as the time with Makoto Kaga--he would never have another chance such as that.  He would not allow anyone to harm Minako to that extent, ever again.

**Twice** he had turned down his best opportunities to achieve what he had been working for since the first day he saw her: claiming Minako as his bride and bringing her body to Venus.  His beautiful, dead Venus, who remained rotting and in pain in the Swamp of the Dead all because she returned--returns--his love.

No matter what his feelings for Minako, can he really leave his little sister to suffer like that?  Is it not his **duty** to kill Minako and offer up her body to Venus, as her brother if not as her lover?  He was the one who spoke first, after all. . . .

His eyes close and his fingers tense, but he sets the bottle back down before he can break it.  He does not need the trouble of pulling shards of glass from his hand, and he does not know how Minako will react if she wakes up to find him bleeding on her carpet.

The devil **can** bleed, after all.

He's fairly sure he can even die.

With all the new weaponry the world has produced, it isn't unlikely.  He is not impervious to bullets, at least.

Deimos closes his eyes again and shuts the vanity drawer.  There is one more item inside, but he does not need to see or touch it.

This is yet another night he has spent skulking in this girl's room, and he has no more answers than he ever did--only the same confusion.  The same endless confusion.

In a few more hours, the sun will begin to rise; and soon after Minako will be waking up.  He might as well leave now--if he stays, he might linger too long . . . and while it would be interesting to see how Minako explains a man sitting on her bed to her mother, he prefers for her not to give him the silent treatment for week.

He taps a finger against the birdcage, once, thoughtfully, before turning to look at her one last time.  He steps forward and brushes a lock of hair off her face, absently fingering the blonde strands that shine as brightly as Venus's ever have, even in the darkness of the bedroom.

Then he pulls away and abruptly disappears.  The only trace of him left behind is a black feather.

A black feather that is almost identical to the one lying in Minako's drawer.


End file.
